


tore it to pieces (but it's better now)

by TheTartWitch



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Exorcists or anyone with spiritual power don't have daemons or have daemon "health conditions", Gen, Loneliness, like Kaname and Tooru, mentioned child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 02:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11888325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: Natsume doesn't have a daemon. Madara, intrigued, volunteers.





	tore it to pieces (but it's better now)

**Author's Note:**

> The canon divergence begins from Reiko's time. Obviously, Madara isn't sealed in a ceramic cat and doesn't meet Reiko, thus he doesn't know or care as much about the Book of Friends as he does Natsume. Also, having no daemon in a world where everyone else does would probably only have exacerbated Reiko and Takashi's loneliness issue, but he's got Madara pretty quickly.   
> Most exorcists don't have daemons but there's an easy spell that creates a "daemon" out of paper/wood/metal/any sort of talisman you work best with (Natori = paper), but you'd have to know an exorcist or have access to someone with knowledge of the spell to use it, so.
> 
> My original end-of-fic notes:   
> Exorcists don’t have daemons. They are the descendants of a witch’s male son (they can’t be witches but are generally still taught witch tricks) and over time even female descendants will be born sans daemon but with spiritual power. Those with weak power or conditional yokai sight with have daemons, but they’ll flicker or turn see-through while power is in use. Taki’s sight is conditional while Tanuma’s is just really weak and somewhat conditional from what I saw of canon, so I tried to include them. Generally people with mythical creatures as daemons are considered insane, so young!Natsume telling people he had a giant flying dog-thing for a daemon was probably not for the best.
> 
> Touko: some kind of ferret, Kamiforan  
> Shigeru: a large dog (probably a german shepherd or retriever or lab of some sort), Penoira  
> Tanuma: thrush, ??  
> Taki: mouse (probably field), ??

He doesn’t remember the first time he met Madara, though he’s been told often enough. He’d been young, small and crying over something only he could see (so obviously this was before he’d learned that crying did nothing and no one was coming to help). Madara had felt his strength, his power, and had approached, intrigued. 

“Where’s your little thing, your daemon?” He’d said, and it had been all wrong, the way he’d said it, as though he was unfamiliar with the concept but held contempt for it all the same, and Natsume had frozen. This beast, he’d probably been thinking, was huge and majestic and terrible, and he had better listen and answer its questions. That was what Madara thought, anyway. Natsume wasn’t so sure that was what he had thought at all.

“I don’t have one,” he’d said. “I never did.”

And Madara had thought about that answer, because based on that answer and this little human’s ability to see him very clearly and hear him and everything, he thought, this human has a very strong ability.

And so, curious, he decided to stick around for entertainment. 

“I’ll be your daemon,” he said, and settled down around the boy like a big, fluffy, breathing cloud, and there he’s always been.

\--

Having Madara by his side didn’t necessarily make everything better: Madara wasn’t very clear on how true daemons actually behaved and Natsume had never had one to know, though he’d observed enough of his classmates’ daemons to sort of guess. Madara still wasn’t visible to anyone else, and it only fueled the awful rumors about him when he told stories of Madara, but Madara was always there to cuddle with at night, and talk to when he had entertaining things to say. Madara liked to drink, though, and he’d terrorize Natsume’s relatives if they didn’t treat him right, which often caused trouble. People couldn’t see or hear him, but they could smell the alcohol hanging around Natsume because it was on Madara’s breath, and Madara was never very far away from him, so that caused problems, but it was fine. Natsume had dealt with worse. 

Madara, however, often slacked off to drink, leaving Natsume open to attack, and thus the mutterings about him and the shuffling between relatives never truly ceased. It only ever got better with the Fujiwaras.

\--

Shigeru was aware that the boy had a daemon. He had never seen it, but he heard stories from the others to foster the boy: how the boy claimed it was invisible, that it was furry and huge and, his personal favorite, if you injured the boy it would growl, furious and menacing, and everything made of glass in your house would shatter and there’d be the sound of someone screaming and in the middle of it all, the boy would be standing there with the blandest, blankest look on his face.

Shigeru had never seen the beast the boy had drawn in pictures when he was young, the hulking wolf-like beast the size of the boy’s bedroom, but he didn’t need to. He knew it existed. He believed Takashi. 

He’d believed him the moment they’d told him they would take him if he’d like and tears had run down his cheeks and something had rumbled gently in his ear, like a cat’s purr if the cat was the size of the boy’s hospital room.

\--

Touko knew there was something special about Takashi when they brought him home. He sat in the backseat, half-drugged and whispering to a “Madara” and giggling. Her Kamiforan clambered up to her shoulder and stood peering back at Takashi’s small, spiny body. Shigeru’s Penoira sat between his knees, staring out the window and panting in the car’s heating system. 

She knew her boy was special when he smiled as he told her about her crow’s white friend, when he tried to hide that he was sick from her to keep from inconveniencing her even though Kamiforan could smell it on him, when he smiled at her like he was surprised she’d done something nice for him, like cook dinner or include him in pleasant conversation or smile and greet him when he came home.

It made her sad, but it also made her happy.

\--

Madara makes friends quickly at the Fujiwaras’ house. He attends a few drinking parties and brings Natsume along when he can. It’s partly for the prestige of having such a powerful human as his and partly because the area is new and he is loathe to leave Natsume home alone with nothing to protect him. Especially since earlier that day they’d been given Natsume’s grandmother’s artifacts which included a book of yokai names, a powerful and dangerous thing in anyone’s hands. 

\--

Natsume’s new school is somehow more accepting of his introduction of Madara, probably because Touko told the school that both his grandmother and mother were descended from witches, so it isn’t so strange that he’d have been separated from his daemon either. Madara sits on the roof above Natsume’s window and lets his tail dangle so that Natsume can see it. He breathes easier when Madara is near. It proves he isn’t as alone as he used to be.

\--

Madara had warned Natsume about exorcists, how they contracted or bound yokai into their service and went about causing trouble and pain with no consideration to those yokai left behind with the fallout. It doesn’t surprise him that there’s an exorcist trying to get rid of a trapped yokai in his neighborhood. 

The man’s daemon is nowhere to be seen, which is odd but not truly strange considering Natsume’s own lack of a daemon, but he has Madara. This man doesn’t appear to have anything.

“Hey!” He calls. “What are you doing over there? Leave that one alone, they’re just doing their job.” The man looks up.

They stare at each other. Madara curls around Natsume, purring softly in lieu of laughter. It makes the exorcist’s eyes widen, and he steps away from the trapped yokai, who doesn’t acknowledge either of them as usual.

“You can see them?” Asks the man softly, and two of his servants appear in the air beside him, one like a ghost and one like a sheep with curved horns.

“Yes,” Natsume replies, his tone upset, and he rests a hand on Madara’s thick tail. It reaches up to his waist the way Madara’s holding it. Madara hisses, but again, it’s more amused than angry. “Leave that one alone. If she’s hurting someone, it’s because she can’t get out of that rope, so either help her or go away.” 

And he doesn’t stay, because he might feel bad for the yokai but not so much that he wants to spend another minute in an exorcist’s presence. He turns and goes home, and Madara keeps watch behind him to make sure the man doesn’t follow or send his servants or spells to watch them, and while he doesn’t sleep  _ easy  _ that night, he certainly sleeps deeply.

\--

The exorcist’s name is Natori and apparently he’s famous. Natsume doesn’t know of him because that sort of thing isn’t of any interest to his practical lifestyle and Madara isn’t the type to watch out for more than one human at a time, and grudgingly if that. He’s nice to Natsume because over time Natsume’s power has welded them together in a sort of contract that is mutually binding, but most humans he would be just as glad to eat them as meet them.

(He likes the boy. He’s stayed up, watching over his nightmares and letting him pet his tail when it was too much, curling around him near predators, sitting in on all his human classes and dozing in the sun on the roof of the school building.

(He likes that the boy doesn’t hold him to human standards, or expect him to know things he wouldn’t, or care that sometimes Madara communicates in noises and movements more than words. They are each other’s other half, just for one lifetime, and it isn’t as much like being shackled as Madara had expected.)

\--

Natsume grows up in the cradle of three different worlds: the Fujiwaras and other people unaware that those with spiritual power and spirits exist, those people without daemons but a heightened sense and power. The exorcists, who see him as an eccentric child and then eccentric teenager and then eccentric, powerful adult with a powerful yokai contracted as his daemon, something none but one, long ago, had been able to do. The yokai, who treat him as one of them because he runs with Madara and his friends and doesn’t allow trespassers on his territory who means harm. They call him “Lord Natsume” for his kindness and his strength and his power, the way his eyes search yours when he needs something of you, the way he will run into danger to save someone even if they don’t deserve it (and how he will let disaster find those who do, even if it pains him later).

He builds up a collection of masks and robes and items, enough collected power to make Madara viewable to those without the ability to see yokai, and together they greet those who always had Natsume’s back: Touko and Shigeru, Tanuma and his quiet, near see-through thrush daemon, Taki and her small, round mouse daemon that sometimes flickered comfortably.

**Author's Note:**

> Well? :)


End file.
